Design and Construction of a Prototype Cost-Effective Water Table Level Detector for Irrigated Fields

It is evident that water table depth is one of the most important physical features of a cropped field, and that its measurement is vital for optimum management. The scarcity of such data in developing countries could be attributed to high cost of commercially available sophisticated devices and their limitations due to their deployment for non-agricultural purposes. In this research, a resistive ground surface to water level depth measurement device was conceptualized, designed and constructed using readily available cost-effective materials for use on irrigated fields in Kadawa area of Kano River Irrigation Project (KRIP). The device concept was simulated with LabCenter Proteus 8.8 proprietary software and then constructed. The operational concept of the device is that when powered on, submerged resistors along the detector resistive chain shuts with the depression of a push button and corresponding unsubmerged depth acquired as voltage drop across a meter and a translating Arduino microcontroller. The device was successfully constructed with some limitations in the availability of required resistors’ design specification and modern assembly technology and equipment. The detector would further be calibrated and validated based on laboratory and field experiment to ascertain it applicability in irrigated fields. Keywords: Cost-effective; Digitized water level detector; Irrigated fields; Resistive transducer; Voltage drop; Water table.